“While I sat watching them I saw him take her in his arms and kiss her; then she ran down the steps with a little laugh, calling back across her shoulder, ‘See you in the morning, Lonny.’
“‘Lonny!’ I couldn’t believe it. There must be some mistake; the twins were still as like as reflections in a mirror, people were always mistaking them, but—‘See you in the morning, Lonny!’ kept dinning in my brain like the surging of the surf at my feet. The world seemed crumbling into dust beneath me, while that endless, laughing refrain kept singing in my ears: ‘See you in the morning, Lonny.’
“The man on the porch stood looking after the retreating figure of the girl as she ran across the lawns to the house where she was stopping, then drew a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from the pocket of his robe. As he bent to light the cigarette he turned toward the ocean and saw me sitting on the sand. Next instant he turned and fled, ran headlong to the window of his room, and disappeared in the darkness.
“What I had seen made me sick—actually physically sick. I wanted to run into the house and fling myself across my bed and cry my heart out, but I was too weak to rise, so I just slumped down on the sand, buried my face in my arms and began to cry. I didn’t know how long I’d been lying there, praying that my heart actually would break and that I’d never see another sunrise, when I felt a hand upon my shoulder.
“‘Why, Beth,’ somebody said, ‘whatever is the matter?’
“It was one of the boys, which one I couldn’t be sure, and he was dressed in corduroy slacks, a sweater and a cap. The bare-head craze hadn’t struck the country in those days.
“‘Who are you?’ I sobbed, for my eyes were full of tears, and I couldn’t see very plainly. ‘Is it Larry, or—’
“‘Larry it is, old thing,’ he assured me with a laugh. ‘Old Lawrence in the flesh and blood, ready to do his Boy Scout’s good daily deed by comforting a lady in distress. I’ve been taking a little tramp down the beach, looking at the moon and feeling grand and lonesome and romantic, and I come home to find you crying here, as if these sands didn’t get enough salt water every day. Where’s Lonny?’
“‘Lonny—’ I began, but he cut in before I had a chance to finish.
“‘Don’t tell me you two’ve quarreled! Why, this was to have been his big night—one of his big nights. The old cuss intimated that he’d be able to bear my absence with true Christian fortitude this evening, as he had some very special spooning to do; so I sought consolation of the Titian-haired Charlotte, only to be told that she, too, had a heavy date. Ergo, as we used to say at college, here is Lawrence by his lone, after walking over ten miles of beach and looking over several thousand miles of ocean. Want to go for a swim before you turn in? Go get your bathing-clothes; I’ll be with you in a jiff.’ He turned to run toward the house, but I called him back.
“‘Larry,’ I asked, ‘you’re sure Lonny hinted that he’d like to be alone tonight?’
“‘Certain sure; honest true, black and blue, cross my heart and hope to die!’ he answered. ‘The old duffer almost threw me out bodily, he was so anxious to see me go.’
“‘And Charlotte,’ I persisted, ‘did she say what—with whom—her engagement for this evening was?’
“‘Why, no,’ he answered. ‘I say, see here, old girl, you’re not getting green-eyed, are you? Why, you know there’s only one woman in the world for Lonny, and—’
“‘Is there?’ I interrupted grimly.
“‘I’ll say there is, and you’re It, spelled with a capital I, just as Charlotte is the one for me. Have I your blessing when I ask her to be Mrs. Lawrence Cardener tomorrow, Beth? I’d have done it tonight, if she hadn’t put me off.’
“I couldn’t stand it. Lonny had betrayed us both, made a mockery of the love I’d given him and debauched the girl his brother loved. Before I realized it, I’d sobbed the whole tale out on Larry’s shoulder, and before I was through we were holding each other like a pair of lost babes in the wood, and Larry was crying as hard as I.
“He was the first to recover his poise. ‘No use crying over a tin of spoiled beans, as we used to say in the army,’ he told me. ‘He and Charlotte can have each other, if they want. I’m through with her, and him, too, the two-faced, double-crossing swine! Keep your tail up, old girl, don’t let him know you know how much he’s hurt you; don’t let him know you know about it at all; just give him back his ring and let him go his way without an explanation.”
“‘Will you take the ring back to him now?’ I asked.
“‘Surest thing,’ he promised, ‘but don’t ask me to make explanations; I’m digging out tomorrow. Off to Paris the day after. Good-bye, old dear, and—better luck next time.’
“I was up early next morning, too. By sunrise I was back in Harrisonville, breaking every speed regulation on the books on the drive up from Seagirt. By noon I had my application filed for a passport; three days later I sailed for England on the Vauban.
“An aunt of mine was married to a London barrister and I stopped with her a while. Lonny wrote me every day, at first, but I sent his letters back unopened. Finally he came to see me, but I wouldn’t meet him. He came back twice, but before he could call the third time I packed and rushed off to the country.
“Larry wrote me frequently, and from him I learned that Lonny had joined the Spanish Foreign Legion which was fighting the Riffs, later that he had been discharged and was making quite a name for himself as a painter of Oriental landscapes. He did some quite good portraits, too, and was almost famous when I came back to America after being four years abroad. Lonny tried to see me, but I managed to avoid him, except at parties when there were others about, and finally he stopped annoying me.
“Three years ago I was married to Larry Cardener, but Lonny wasn’t our best man. Indeed, we had a very quiet wedding, timed to take place while he was away.
“Larry seemed to have forgotten all his rancor against Lonny, and Lonny was at our house a greal deal. I avoided him at first, but gradually his old sweetness and gentleness won me back, and though I could never quite forget his perfidy to me, somehow, I think that I forgave him.”
“He was a changed man, Madame?” de Grandin asked softly as the woman halted in her narrative and sat passively, staring sightlessly ahead, hands folded motionless in her lap.
“No,” she answered in that oddly uninflected tone, “he was less changed than Larry. A little older, a little more serious, perhaps, but still the same sweet, ingenuous lad I’d known and loved so long ago. Larry had become quite gray—early grayness runs in the Cardener family—while Lonny had only a single gray streak running backward from his forehead where a Riff saber had slashed his scalp. He’d picked up an odd trick, too, of brushing his mustache ever so lightly with his bent forefinger when he was puzzled. He explained this by the fact that most of the officers in the Spanish Legion wore full mustaches, different from the close-cropped ones affected by the British, and that he’d followed the custom, but never got quite used to the extra hair on his face. Now, though he’d gone back to the clipped mustache of his young manhood, the Legion mannerism persisted. I can see him now when he and Larry were having an argument over some point of art technique and Larry got the best of it—he was always cleverer than Lonny—how he’d raise his bent finger and brush first one side of his mustache, then the other.”
“U’m,” de Grandin commented, and as he did so, unconsciously raised his hand to tweak the needle-pointed ends of his own trimly waxed wheat-blond mustache. “One quite understands, Madame. And then?”
“Larry had done well with his art,” she answered. “He’d had some fine commissions and executed all successfully, but somehow he seemed changing. For one thing, since prohibition, he’d taken to drinking rather heavily—said he had to do it entertaining business prospects, though that was no excuse for his consuming a bottle of port and half a pint of whisky nearly every evening after dinner—”
“Quel magnifique!” de Grandin broke in softly, then: “Pra
y proceed, Madame.”
“He was living beyond our means, too. As soon as he began to be successful he discarded the studio at the house and rented a pretentious one downtown. Often he spent the night there, and though I didn’t actually know it for a fact, I understood he often gave elaborate parties there at night; parties which cost a lot more than we could afford.
“I never understood it, for Larry didn’t take me into his confidence at all, but early this spring he seemed desperately in need of money. He tried to borrow everywhere, but no one would lend to him; finally he went to his father.
“Mr. Cardener was a queer man, easygoing in most ways, but very hard in others. He absolutely refused to lend Larry a cent, but offered to advance him what he needed on his share of his inheritance. He’d made a will in which the boys were co-legatees, each to have one-half the estate, you see. Larry accepted eagerly, then went back for several more advances, until his share was almost dissipated. Then—” she paused, not in a fit of weeping, not even with a sob, but rather as though she had come to an impasse.
“Yes, Madame; then?” de Grandin prompted softly.
“Then came the scandal. Mr. Cardener was found dead—murdered—in his library one morning, slashed and cut almost to ribbons with a painter’s palette knife. The second man, who answered the door the night before they found him, was a new servant, but he had seen Larry several times and Lonny once. He testified that Lonny came to the house about ten o’clock, quarreled violently with his father, and left in a rage twenty minutes or half an hour later. He identified Lonny positively by the gray streak in his hair, which was otherwise dark brown, and by the fact that he brushed his mustache nervously with the knuckle of his right forefinger, both when he demanded to see his father and when he left. After Lonny’d gone, the servant went to the library, but found the door locked and received no answer to his rapping. He thought Mr. Cardener was in a rage, as he had been on several occasions when Larry had called; so he made no attempt to break into the room. But next morning when they found Mr. Cardener hadn’t slept in his bed and the library door was still locked, they broke in, and found him murdered.”
“U’m?” de Grandin murmured noncommittally. “And were there further clues, Madame?”
“Yes, unfortunately. On the library table, so plainly marked in blood that it could not be mistaken, was the print of Lonny’s whole left hand. Not just a fingerprint, but the entire palm and fingers. Also, on the palette knife with which the killing had been done, they found Lonny’s fingerprints.”
“U’m,” repeated Jules de Grandin. “He was at pains to put the noose around his neck, this one.”
“So it seemed,” agreed our passenger. “Lonny denied being at his father’s house that night, or any night within a month, but there was no way be could prove an alibi. He lived alone, having his studio in his house, and his servants, a man and wife, went home every night after dinner. They weren’t there the night of the murder, of course. Then there was that handprint and those finger-marks upon the knife.”
“Eh bien, Madame,” de Grandin answered, “that is the hardest nut of all to crack, the deepest river of them all to ford. Human witnesses may lie, human memories may fail, or be woefully inexact, but fingerprints—handprints? No, it is not so. Me, I was too many years associated with the Service Sûreté not to learn as much. What laymen commonly deride as circumstantial evidence is the best evidence of them all. I would rather base a case on it than on the testimony of a hundred human witnesses, all of whom might be either honestly mistaken or most unmitigated liars. If you can but explain away—”
“I can,” the girl broke in with her first show of animation. “Listen: Last year, six months before the murder, three months before Larry made his first request for funds from his father, he began making a collection of casts of famous hands as a hobby. When he told Lonny he wanted to include his among them, Lonny nearly went into hysterics at the idea. But he consented to let Larry take a cast. I don’t know much about such things, but isn’t it customary to take such impressions directly in plaster of Paris?”
“Plaster of Paris? But certainly,” the Frenchman answered with a puzzled frown. “Why is it that you ask?”
“Because Larry took the impression of his brother’s hands in gelatin.”
“Grand Dieu des artichauts!” exclaimed de Grandin. “In gélatine? Oh, never-to-be-sufficiently-anathematized treachery! One begins to see the glimmer of a little so small gleam of light in this dark case, Madame. Say on. I shake, parbleu, I quiver with attention!”
For the first time she looked directly at him, nodding her small head. “At the trial Larry admitted that he’d had advances from his father, but declared he’d gotten them for Lonny. He proved it, too.”
“Proved it?” de Grandin echoed. “How do you mean, Madame?”
“Just what I say. The canceled checks were shown in court by Mr. Cardener’s executor, and every one of them had been endorsed and cashed by Lonny. Lonny swore Larry asked him to cash them for him so that no one could trace the money, because he was afraid of attachment proceedings, but Larry denied this under oath and offered his bank books in substantiation of his claim. None of them showed deposits of any such amounts as he’d had from his father.” De Grandin clenched his little hands to fists and beat the knuckles against his temples. “Mon Dieu,” he moaned, “this case will be the death of me, Madame. See if I apprehend you rightly:
“It appeared to those who sat in court”—he checked the items off upon his flngers—“that Monsieur Lawrence, at the risk of incurring paternal displeasure, secured loan after loan on his inheritance, ostensibly for himself, but actually for his brother. He proves he turned his father’s loans intact over to Monsieur Alonzo. His brother says he cashed the checks and gave the cash back. This is denied. Furthermore, proof, or rather lack of proof, that the brother ever banked such sums is offered. Sitting as we do behind the scenes, we may suspect that Monsieur Lawrence is indulging in double-dealing; but did we sit out in the theater as did that judge and jury, should we not have been fooled, as well? I think so. What makes you sure that they were wrong and we are right, Madame? I do not cast aspersion on your intuition; I merely ask to know.”
“I have proof,” she answered levelly. “When Lonny had been sentenced and the governor refused to intervene, even to commute his sentence to life imprisonment, it seemed to me that I’d go wild. All these years I’d thought I hated Lonny for what he did that night so long ago; when I finally brought myself to see and talk with him, I thought the hatred had lulled to mere resentment, passive dislike. I was wrong. I never hated Lonny; I’d always loved him, only I loved my foolish, selfish pride more. What if he did—what if he and Charlotte Dey—oh, you understand! Lots of men—most men, I suppose—have affairs before marriage, and their wives and the world think nothing of it. Why should I have set myself up as the exception and demanded greater purity in the man I took to husband than most wives ask—or get? When I realized there was no hope for Lonny, I was nearly frantic, and last night after dinner I begged Larry to try to think of some way we could save him.
“He’d been drinking more than ever lately; last night he was sottish, beastly. ‘Why should I try to save the poor fool?’ he asked. ‘D’ye think I’ve been to all the trouble to put him where he is just to pull him out?’ Then, drunkenly, boastfully, he told me everything.
“It wasn’t Lonny whom I’d seen with Charlotte Dey that night at Seagirt. It was Larry. When Lonny said good-night to me and went into the house, he heard Larry and Charlotte in Larry’s room, which was next to his. He knocked upon the door and demanded that Larry take her out of there at once, even threatening to tell their father if his order weren’t obeyed immediately. Larry tried to argue, but finally agreed, for he seemed frightened when Lonny threatened to tell Mr. Cardener.
“Lonny, furious with his brother and the Dey girl, came out on the veranda to see that Charlotte actually left, and was sitting there when I came up the porch to get the
cook-book. He wanted to spare me the humiliation of seeing Larry that way, and demanded that I go back at once. The poor lad was so anxious to help me that his manner was unintentionally rough.
“I’d just been gone a moment when Larry and Charlotte came out. Larry saw me crying on the sand, and the whole scheme came to him like an inspiration. ‘Call me Lonny!’ he whispered to Charlotte as they said good-night, and the spiteful little minx did it. Then he rushed back to his room, pulled outdoor clothes on over his pajamas and made a circuit of the house, waiting in the shadows till he saw me bow my head upon my arm, then running noiselessly across the lawn and beach till he was beside me and ready to play his little comedy.
“He hated Lonny for taking me away from him, and—you know how the old proverb says those whom we have injured are those whom we hate most?—his hatred seemed to grow and grow as time went on. Finally he evolved this scheme to murder Lonny. After he’d made the gelatine mold of Lonny’s hands, he made a rubber casting from it, like a rubber stamp, you know, and then began importuning his father for money. Each time he’d get a check he’d have Lonny cash it for him, then put the money in some secret place. Finally, exactly as he’d planned, his father refused to advance him any more, and they quarreled. Then, knowing that the butler, who had known them both since they were little boys, would be away that night, he stained his hair to imitate Lonny’s, called at the house and impersonated his brother. When his father demanded what he meant by the masquerade, he answered calmly that he’d come to kill him, and intended Lonny should be executed for the crime. He stabbed his father with a palette knife he’d stolen from Lonny’s studio almost a year before, hacked and slashed the body savagely, and made a careful print of the rubber hand in blood on the library table. Lonny’s left-handed, you know, and it was the print of his left hand they found on the table, and the prints of his left fingers which were found marked in blood upon the handle of the knife.
The Dark Angel Page 58
